apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I love studies like this, but I can't tell if they've factored in the travel emission to the per capita office worker figure. I have a two hour round trip car commute, I'd imagine staying home in my AC free Los Angeles apartment would save quite a bit, but maybe I'm wrong.

"carbon dioxide emissions"? Give me a break.

And AC free? If you like sweltering, more power to you. I'll take comfort over political correctness any day.

There's much more dangerous emissions from cars than CO2. Despite all the hype, there's currently 380PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere. To change it to even 390 will take decades. Of course that doesn't mean we should cut pollution - it just means we have to keep everything in perspective and drive (no pun intended) car makers to produce cleaner vehicles.

We're seeing far more focus on CO2 than we should. In a way I think it's deliberate because it does take focus away from much more dangerous pollutants - so stop the CO2 hype, please.

All the hype on CO2 emissions are taking the focus away from where it should be - deforestation (trees eat CO2 in addition to helping regulate weather patterns in a major way) and the emission of all the truly hazardous poisons emitted by cars.

Does that mean we shouldn't drive? Stop building roads (as Portland has done, creating impossible commuting scenarios as Californians continue to flock here like lemmings)? Focus on "green" ethanol (which is a total scam and pollutes just as much as gas while making corn unaffordable in 3rd world countries)?

Nope. It means more cities should have a goal of much greater tree canopies (Vancouver (WA) is a leader in this). West coast cities are mostly a total joke when it comes to livability. Changing that would go a long way to helping the environment in general.

It means that if cities are going to spend billions on light rail/monorail/trams, buses, they should go where most of the people do, *when* most of the people do. Portland (OR) gets a big fat "F" in that regard. SF on the other hand gets an A in my opinion.

It means that car makers should be given tax breaks tied to really tight emissions goals that can only be met by hybrids - or (better yet!) new technology, and also tied to meaningful sales volume to encourage them to produce low-emissions vehicles that people will actually buy. There's no incentive to buy a Prius, for example, with it's inflated price tag, even at $4 a gallon gas.

I also wonder if they take into account the fact that you're obviously not going to turn the heat off in your house during the winter, regardless of whether you're actually there or not. Sure, you may turn it down a bit if it's under your control, but in my parents new england house, the pipes would freeze.

Of course, I live in a steam radiator heated apartment in manhattan, so my heat is just ON from October through May.

Problem is, you can complicate the equations in so many ways.

What if the multi-worker office is now smaller because it has to house fewer workers, so it uses less energy?

What if the telecommuter has a stay-at-home spouse taking care of the kids (or a nanny) so the house would be heated, cooled, and full of boiling tea kettles all day anyway?

How long of a commute does it take to tip the balance back toward telecommuting?

What if I live in a micro-climate that calls for very little heating or AC but my office is in one that uses much more energy (say, someone who lives a warm spot in San Francisco but works down the Peninsula).

What about being able to work by ambient light at home but needing artificial light in the office because of how each is laid out?

What about the environmental impact of buying fewer clothes because of fewer days in the office and willingness to wear the same jeans a lot? Or of not going out for lunch?

That's just a start. Give me 12 hours and a powerful enough computer program, and I could make that study give any answers I wanted it to.

"Give me 12 hours and a powerful enough computer program, and I could make that study give any answers I wanted it to."

Which is true of any collection of statistics.

That's why all those health studies always contradict each other every couple of years. Atkins is good. Wait, Atkins is bad.

Which is one reason I enjoyed Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper" so much.

Also, the TreeHugger duly points out that this is a British study, and there far more people commute to work by public transportation, which should factor into the lower energy bill.

Also, while I think planting more trees will not hurt anyone, planting trees in Oregon will not solve CO2 emission problems for that area, as trees in temperate zones are much less efficient at CO2 sequestration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset#Climate_impacts

However, trees anywhere are great for providing shade and increasing ambient humidity, which should make it easier to break America's extreme AC dependency.

wende - you are my favorite. you always have such valid points that make me want to say he!! yeah!